OpenAI ignites Microsoft Corporation (MSFT.US) AI revenue super engine! The main line of the AI bull market is shifting from "buying chips" to "monetizing AI applications."

According to the latest information disclosed by American tech giant Microsoft Corporation (MSFT.US), the majority of its artificial intelligence (AI)-related revenue comes from OpenAI, a superpower focused on AI cloud computing infrastructure and software. OpenAI is not only the most important supplier of cutting-edge AI models for Microsoft Corporation's business empire, but also a super customer that consumes Azure computing power, pays for model training and high-level AI application inference costs, and shares revenue and profits. Major shareholder Microsoft Corporation is leveraging its Azure infrastructure, corporate sales channels, and software gateways such as Microsoft 365, GitHub, and Dynamics to package OpenAI models into a scalable enterprise AI application service ecosystem. It is understood that Microsoft Corporation recently stated in a regulatory filing that in the fiscal year ending June, the tech giant generated approximately $24.1 billion in revenue from this AI startup. Microsoft Corporation CEO Satya Nadella stated that, based on the growth rate at that time, the companys AI business could potentially reach $37 billion in annual revenue by the end of the fiscal year for the quarter ending in March. When Microsoft Corporation announced its fourth-quarter results last week, it did not update the total sales figures for its AI-related business. The investment theme in the stock market is currently shifting from "who builds and configures the largest GPU data centers" to "who can convert tokens into sustainable cash flow." This is the underlying logic of Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. regarding its optimistic outlook on Microsoft Corporation as a key beneficiary of the "monetization phase of AI applications." Compared to reacquiring customers in independent AI applications, Microsoft Corporation can cross-sell Copilot and intelligent agent services to its vast existing corporate installations, resulting in lower marginal customer acquisition costs, deeper data and workflow barriers, while simultaneously covering models, cloud platforms, development tools, and the super ecosystem of AI applications. The truth behind the concentration in AI revenue prosperity: OpenAI may contribute about 70% of Microsoft Corporation's AI revenue. This latest disclosure indicates that OpenAI contributed over half of the AI-related business revenue Microsoft Corporation actually achieved in its most recent fiscal year, and it is likely around 70%, highlighting the extent to which Microsoft Corporation currently relies on this closely-knit partnership. According to the agreement between the two companies, OpenAI is required to pay Microsoft Corporation for AI cloud computing infrastructure costs, costs incurred in building AI models, and a certain percentage of revenue sharing. Microsoft Corporation has been trying to reduce its reliance on this partner, including investing in OpenAI rival Anthropic and developing its own models. However, when specifically assessing the progress of Microsoft Corporation's AI business and overall valuation, investors are always asking: how much of the revenue comes from OpenAI. Market research firm Bloomberg Intelligence's analysis hypotheses show that Microsoft Corporation's annual run rate (ARR) for its AI business continues to maintain the 123% rapid growth rate the company announced in March. At this growth rate, Microsoft Corporation's AI-related business is expected to generate approximately $34 billion in revenue for the fiscal year ending in June, a number that can be directly compared with the approximately $24.1 billion in revenue OpenAI contributed to Microsoft Corporation during that fiscal year. Microsoft Corporation has only disclosed the total scale of its AI-related business twice. The first time was in the quarter ending December 2024, when the company stated that its AI-related business was expected to exceed $13 billion in annual sales at the current run rate. The second was during the earnings call for the quarter ending in March, where Microsoft Corporation indicated its annual AI-related business revenue was expected to exceed $37 billion. The total amount of Microsoft Corporation's AI-related business, in a broad sense, includes revenue from all AI-related customer groups and data from selling Microsoft Corporation's proprietary AI products to any customer. However, a Microsoft Corporation spokesperson has confirmed that the revenue contribution figure from OpenAI mainly includes all sales from OpenAI and revenue sharing. When compared to Microsoft Corporation's total revenue, OpenAI's business proportion appears to be much smaller, at less than 10%. Microsoft Corporation stated that it added approximately $51 billion in commercial orders in the most recent quarter, primarily driven by customers outside the AI startup space. Nevertheless, OpenAI still accounted for most of the annual order growth for Microsoft Corporation. Until last week, Microsoft Corporation had never explicitly disclosed its total revenue from OpenAI. Accounting researcher and founder of data analytics firm Nonlinear Analytics, Olga Usvyatski, stated in a research report that this latest disclosure might be related to OpenAI's preparation for an initial public offering (IPO). A senior analyst at Wall Street financial giant KeyBanc, Jackson Ade, indicated that a significant question remains unanswered: how much of the revenue contribution from OpenAI comes from the revenue sharing agreement and how much comes from AI cloud computing services or other services provided by Microsoft Corporation. He stated, "The more that revenue comes from providing services to OpenAI, rather than from investment income, the more positively I view the business." From "selling AI computing resources" to "selling productivity": OpenAI has ignited Microsoft Corporation's AI revenue engine. Microsoft Corporation's heavy reliance on OpenAI is not due to a lack of cloud computing or software engineering capabilities, but because both parties have built a highly coupled "bilateral business flywheel": OpenAI is both the most important supplier of cutting-edge models for Microsoft Corporation and a super customer that consumes Azure computing power, pays for model training and inference costs, and shares revenue data; Microsoft Corporation takes advantage of Azure infrastructure, corporate sales channels, and software gateways such as Microsoft 365, GitHub, and Dynamics to package OpenAI models into scalable enterprise services. The latest disclosure shows that, as of June 2026, Microsoft Corporation confirmed approximately $24.1 billion in revenue from business arrangements related to OpenAI; according to Bloomberg Intelligence estimates, this could account for about 70% of Microsoft Corporation's actual AI sales. Therefore, Microsoft Corporation's current AI growth benefits from OpenAI's technological leadership, but also faces concentration risk, bargaining power issues, and revenue cyclicality risksinvestors must distinguish between the computing power and revenue sharing that comes from OpenAI itself and the real AI application revenue data from millions of independent enterprise customers. Microsoft Corporation's latest quarterly revenue reached $90 billion, a year-on-year increase of 18%; Azure and other cloud services grew 43%, and Azure's annual revenue data first surpassed $100 billion. Meanwhile, the paid seats for Microsoft 365 Copilot increased from over 20 million in the previous quarter to more than 30 million. In terms of AI applications, Microsoft Corporation's core advantage is not just the models but also the control over enterprise identity permissions, emails, documents, meetings, code, CRM, and data governance systems, which allows AI to be directly embedded into existing workflows and generates high stickiness recurring revenue through per-seat subscriptions, usage-based billing, and Azure consumption. The super bull market surrounding AI is shifting from "buying chip stocks" to "buying AI workflows," meaning the current market is revaluing the investment theme of the AI bull market from "who invests the most capital expenditure" to "who can quickly convert computing power into ARR, profit margins, and free cash flow." This latest rotation benefits software companies that embed into key enterprise processes, have high renewal rates, data barriers, and monetization capabilities for intelligent agents, but it does not mean that all traditional software stocks will rise in unison. As the stock prices of major cloud computing and software giants Microsoft Corporation, Amazon.com, Inc., and Alphabet Inc. Class C surge, particularly with Amazon.com, Inc.'s stock price rising 20% since the end of July, pushing its market value past the $3 trillion mark, recent software stocks have shown significant outperformance compared to the broader market and semiconductors. The S&P 500 index edged down about 0.1% in July, while the iShares Software ETF (ETF Code: IGV) rose 4.4%; Workday, Accenture Plc Class A, and Cognizant Technology Solutions Corporation Class A increased about 31%, 33%, and 43% respectively during the month. On some trading days when chip stocks faced severe sell-offs due to deleveraging, application software stocks like Adobe, ServiceNow, Workday, and Palantir generally rose about 7%-10% in a single day, while the software ETF rose 3.3%, and the semiconductor ETF fell instead. Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. sees Microsoft Corporation becoming a key beneficiary of the "monetization phase of applications" mainly because, compared to reacquiring customers for independent AI applications, Microsoft Corporation can cross-sell Copilot and intelligent agent services to its vast existing enterprise installations, resulting in lower marginal customer acquisition costs, deeper data and workflow barriers, while simultaneously covering models, cloud platforms, development tools, and application layers. However, investment judgment cannot only focus on the total revenue of AI business; whether Microsoft Corporation can achieve the next round of valuation leap depends on the growth rate of AI revenue after excluding OpenAI revenue sharing, Copilot paid seats and revenue per seat, enterprise renewal rates, Azure AI gross margins, and capital expenditure return rates. In other words, OpenAI has helped Microsoft Corporation win a ticket to the AI era, but whether Microsoft Corporation can become the biggest long-term winner ultimately depends on its ability to transform its reliance on a single partner into multi-model, platform-based AI application revenue covering global enterprise customers.